


too many days to count

by orphan_account



Series: even better 'verse [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Genocide, Starvation, Tarsus IV, au: jim was born deaf, implied panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Sort of a sequel to "even better than winning a war"? Thanks for reading!</p>
    </blockquote>





	too many days to count

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a sequel to "even better than winning a war"? Thanks for reading!

The numbers on the nightstand clock shined in the dark, but it took Jim a few seconds, blinking blearily, to adjust to the darkness. Bones was gone; the sheets on his bed rumpled. 

Probably at the gym, knowing him, even though it was three in the morning. Jim had been having a nightmare, and now that he was awake, found that the room was empty and silent, but for the leaky faucet.

The food shortage on Tarsus IV hadn't been planned, but two months into Jim's stay there, people started getting desperate.

His mother and brother were in Iowa, but Jim was going to be able to see them soon. After the fifth playground fight, his stepfather had decided that a thirteen year-old Jim should go to Athens Disciplinary School, where he would stay for the summer. 

When Kodos took power, Jim kept counting down the days to when he could see Winona and Sam again. When his older classmates who had limps or birth defects stumbled through the school doors bloody and bruised, he got them ice.

They were all hungry, but Kodos said if they wanted to live, they needed to decide who would get rations.

When Kodos' men came knocking on all the doors, the relief ships were on their way, but they didn't know. 

They thought the only choice they had was to take others' away, so they rounded up four thousand of those who they thought were unworthy, and pressed phasers to their heads.

The teachers tried to hide Jim. The computer banks were faulty, so the soldiers couldn't read the kids' profiles. The ones who were blind or too sick couldn't be mistaken, so off they went.

But Jim could pretend to listen, could read the lips of the soldiers spattered with grave-dirt, could nod when necessary, though even keeping his head up was hard in his constant state of hunger.

By the time they received word that Jim was imperfect, unfit for the plan-by the time anybody noticed the lag in response from the skinny blond kid-the relief ships were shooting through the sky. 

"I think these things are pretty safe," Jim had reassured Bones when they had met, and that was because the relief ships that had come for them all were from Starfleet. 

He might not remember much, but he remembered the insignias on the doctors' shirts, the way they put him in a soft white bed and pumped him full of nutrients. 

Jim knew there hadn't been many survivors, but they said Kodos was dead, so it was enough. They had taken a mini-shuttle for him to go home in, after he was mostly healed. 

Everyone on Earth, it seemed, had heard of the atrocities; his mother had commed the doctors endlessly for word of her son. The quickest way to reunite them was to bring Jim to her, no matter how many times she wanted to drop everything and go to him.

Jim Kirk looked through the porthole of the shuttle until he could see the grass around the small two-story house in rural Iowa, his house.

Winona Kirk and her other son ran to Jim as soon as the shuttle landed, and didn't let go for a very long time.

He remembered their embraces even now, sitting in his bed in Starfleet with eyes that burned with exhaustion. No longer hungry, though, which he was grateful for. He was healthy, broad-shouldered, and smiled more often than he didn't: all signs that what had happened to him on Tarsus IV would never be anything more than a page in a history book.

The nightmares never stopped, of course, and neither did the suffocating panic that came with them, but Jim had time. He could afford to lean against the headboard and count his breaths until they evened out.

Half a year he had spent in the moldy school on Tarsus IV, but that was all. He had four years-well, better make that three-to earn his own goddamned ship. 

There was a lot of potential in all the time Jim had, and he wasn't going to waste it. 

His heartbeat had quieted itself, so Jim let himself lie down on the bed again. The clock still stared at him, numbers blinking, but he turned away, and let sleep take him.


End file.
